leanor Glanville was in her early thirties Ewhen she made a terrible mistake. A wealthy widow, in 1685 she married a second husband who was more interested in her fortune than in marital bliss. He became increasingly violent, kidnapped their own son and turned her family against her. After she died, a judge rejected her will on the grounds that she was “not in sound mind”. The evidence offered for her supposed insanity was that she collected butterflies: apparently it was obvious that “none but those who were deprived of their senses, would go in Pursuit of Butterflies”.
Over three centuries later, Glanville remains the only British naturalist to have bequeathed their name to a native butterfly species, the Glanville fritillary. The science of entomology had not yet been
